WAYS TO RECOVERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 49, 27 February 1935, Page 16

WAYS TO RECOVERY.

The president of the New Zealand Society of Accountants makes a very dogmatic statement in asserting that: "In the welter of economic theory, accountants have the "satisfaction of knowing that the. soundness of the principles on which accounting practice is based lias never been in question, but has been even more firmly established by the experience of the past few years." Whilst it is admitted that their accounting is the recording of transactions from the money aspect, it is not true to say that the validity of this function as the portrayal of the actual facts relating to goods and services is or has been unquestioned. For instance, the present method of recording "profit" has departed far from fact regarding profit, which is really quantitative and qualitative increases of goods and efficiency of services. Contrast this with the plight of many of New Zealand's primary producers, who are becoming quite accustomed to their actual increases of output being accounted as "financial losses." Then in the matter of "interest," we seldom, if ever, hear of accountants criticising the principles of this practice as usurping the legitimate functions of the "profit and loss system," and substi-j tilting seizure of security in place of the "loss" side, though many protest's against the interest system on these and other grounds have been made from other sources. It would appear that in the acceptance of the "principles" of even these two aspects of accounting our accountants are at least passively acquiescent parties to grave defects in the monetary system, whereas their close association with its ramifications should] put them in a position of being able to speak with authority upon its observed weaknesses. LITTLE WILLI!:.